Friday, April 28, 2006

New Time Control

From the 77th FIDE Congress Agenda:

The FIDE Presidential Board accepted the proposal of ACP for a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

The list of events where this single time control will be used:

Chess Olympiads
World Team Championships
Continental Team Championships
World Cup
Continental Championships
Zonal Tournaments
World Youth & Junior Championships
Continental Youth & Junior Championships
World School Championships
Continental Club Championships

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why this insistence on having move 40 as a flag fall danger point? Why not simply have 90 60 ( I think the Australian Championships or Open has this time control )? I like the 60 sec increment as you see the full minute altering the clock. Often times a player could do with the 30 minutes added after move 40 beforehand so perhaps 120 60 even. However I suspect the ACP proposed time control is designed to ensure that 2 game per day FIDE rateable events are manageable. With incremental (Fischer) events what might one day be added is a limit to the number of moves played (eg USCF 180 moves [does that still happen?]) before a draw is enforced. Most games are over by move 60; few continue beyond move 120 ... as a Chessbase game length search will indicate.

Anonymous said...

It's official,the classical time control-40/120 is dead.

What a pity.

Anonymous said...

I agree, the time control after 40 moves is needless. That would cause two time trouble phases to the game instead of one. I think the best time control in serious chess game should be simply 120 60 with the total time of one game being 6 hours if the lenght of game is expected to be 60 moves.